Integrating math, science and technology in an international project

My good friend, Finnish eTwinning ambassador Tuija Lindström, has been involved in new ways of teaching and learning for quite a few years, first in GOAL (Go Outside and Learn) and then in MOE (Maths on Earth) projects.

Maths on Earth is both Comenius and eTwinning project. It focuses on the use of mathematics as a tool to study real world phenomena and to lead students to mathematical and scientific problem-solving in everyday situations.

Many of the project activities are carried out outside the classroom in the nature, museums, workshops and companies. Mainly, participatory teaching methods, such as short inquiry-based projects, experimental arrangements, games and brain-storming, are used. The idea is to connect everything that is studied in students’ everyday life. The partner teachers design learning materials and workshops to be held jointly together, thus widening and deepening their own understanding of teaching and learning.

The students aged 13-15 are extremely motivated to carry out the tasks. Their communication and social skills have developed. Especially the girls have benefitted from the new holistic approach to math and science.  The communication between students from different countries in an authentic virtual environment supports foreign language learning. Students have the opportunity to design their own learning and work. In this way their own initiative is encouraged and their self-esteem and self-organizing skills are developed. The results of the students’ work are published on the net.

Tuija outlines her own experience:

As a teacher I’ve developed and widened my views. Sharing and learning together with teachers and students from different cultures has been rewarding.  My relationship with my own students has developed as my role as a teacher has changed. The students’ uniqueness and diversity as human beings has become more evident day by day while working together with them, side-by-side.

MOE - project website

Promoting cultural awareness and understanding

Last week I had great news. The eTwinning project Intercultural dialogue through fairy tales, drama and art was awarded by the Mevlana prize for connecting people across borders. I had the pleasure of being one minor part of this huge project comprising students and teachers from 35 different schools in almost as many countries.

During the one year project students first chose a traditional fairy tale of their own country, translated it in English and illustrated it. After that they made a drama video of one of the partner countries’ fairy tales. The process of students working together was documented. All the project products were published on a shared wiki containing an eBook of the fairy tales called Once upon a Time in Europe and a video book containing the students' performances. 

It’s inherent for eTwinning projects that the activities involved are integrated in the school curriculum and support achieving its goals. The best projects are typically cross curricular, so that many different subjects and skills are developed. In this project our students learned Finnish, English and art and, especially, communication and media skills, creative use of digital photography and videos, team work and cooperation. Their awareness of different European countries and cultures developed and their horizons widened while reading the fairy tales, watching the videos and writing cards and sending greetings to their partners.

Once a year excellent eTwinning projects are rewarded at a prize giving ceremony at the annual eTwinning conference. This year it will be in Lisbon on the 14th of March. It's a wonderful opportunity for many of the teachers who worked closely together for a year to meet face-to-face for the first time. The winners of 2013.

"Participating in an eTwinning project means that you wish to (…) offer your pupils the possibility to exchange, to share, to cooperate and to broaden their horizons. (…) By running this type of project you are making a specific contribution to improving the quality of teaching. (…) The practices you carry out in your projects (…) are teaching treasures and techniques that deserve to be shared, and should be made known and recognized by the whole of the European educational community."

Thinking 2013

In November, the Finnish National Board of Education published the first draft of the national curriculum framework of basic education. This started a nation-wide discussion on the future of education which will, hopefully, continue all through the year 2013 and which all teachers and students and other stakeholders will take part in.

To stay up-to-date schools will need to be increasingly connected with the surrounding society locally, nationally and world-wide. International contacts and networks, partner classes and different kinds of learning projects will provide our students with the skills they’ll need as citizens of the global world.

Learning in an authentic context in collaboration with one’s peers makes learning meaningful, creates a feeling of involvement and enhances commitment. Authenticity is also at the heart of the phenomenon-based learning. Creative ideas are born and thinking skills develop in an open environment in which different cultures, languages and points of view meet.

As the world is changing and technologies are developing at an accelerating pace, many of the ‘good old’ practices need to be questioned. Teachers can’t be experts in every topic and individually responsible for the student’s development. Instead we need collective responsibility and shared expertise, co-teaching and team work.

To integrate the use of new technologies in learning we need the students to bring their own devices (BYOD) to school and the informal learning of the students to be recognized and made use of. The students will learn more and more outside school. When they bring their knowledge and skills to the classroom, they'll enrich the learning process and promote thinking outside the box. The school must be ready to take advantage of this. Learning contents can’t be so narrowly defined that the developing technologies and approaches, innovative ideas and individual learning paths won’t fit in.

I hope that the New Year 2013 will lead us towards the school of the future. I hope the discussion on the new curriculum framework will spread to every corner of Finland and changes of learning culture will start to take place. I hope we teachers open our hearts and minds and welcome the world in our classrooms. I wish you …

The Future School - School in 2020

In November I gave a three-week online course for nearly one hundred eTwinning teachers from all over Europe. The topic of the learning event was the future school. We watched videos and presentations, and discussed future trends together. Participating teachers shared opinions and ideas about the future of learning in small groups comparing different scenarios.

The same issues worry teachers across Europe: the poor economic situation leading to cutbacks that target schools and educational development, the enormous pace of technological development impossible to keep up with without major education policy changes and concerns about technology replacing human interaction.

When discussing what  future school buildings and learning environments would be like, a large part of the teachers were in favour of large, spacious and adaptable areas containing workstations for various activities and facilities that support learning in groups of various sizes and independent work. Virtual environments will allow individual learning paths, learning together in international projects, large scale interaction with the world outside and overlapping of school and free time activities.

On the whole, the participants felt that, in the future, collaborative student-centered learning methods will be prevalent. By working together students learn important skills: communication, knowledge-building, creative thinking and learning to learn, of which the last one, the teachers considered of a special importance.

Teaching profession was discussed using five different scenarios. Many participants found especially interesting the scenario in which teachers specialize in one or two different learning methods. Teachers offer a variety of learning paths for students to choose from, so that they can follow the path that suits their learning style best and is the most motivating and appealing. This scenario is built on the idea of teachers’ continuous professional development, networking and cooperation. Flexibility and student-centered learning methods are its corner stones.

You can read more about the learning event here. If thinking about the future with other teachers interests you, there will be a new course in April 2013.

Here you can read the results of the team work:

Open publication - Free publishing - More education

First posting

At the moment I'm working as project coordinator in the Mentor Programme for the Internationalization of General Education. It's funded by the Finnish National Board of Education. Its ultimate goal is to mainstream international education in the new national curriculum framework and the local curricula which will be applied from August 2016 onwards.

To reach that, I'll be working together with experienced teachers and experts all around Finland to create regional strategies and networks to make different kinds of international projects, multicultural happenings and global education an integrated part of every pupils' and teachers' yearly schedule. I can't see this possible without radical changes in the ways we teach and learn today.

I bought my first Olivetti pc in 1986. Ever since I've used computer in my dily studies and work. For over ten years, I've been interested in implementing ICT in international projects and learning in general. In 2004 I started experimenting with Moodle environment, which turned out to be very applicable in different European learning projects. Since that, I've been coordinating quite a few eTwinning, Comenius and Grundtvig projects and have given lectures, workshops and online courses dealing with the pedagogical use of different Web 2.0 tools and collaboration of students and teachers in online learning projects.

With my new job and with the new national curriculum framework being under construction in Finland, I feel now is the time to start blogging about all these issues that interest me in the schools and education of today and tomorrow. Future is there, just one leap away, and I'm not going to be the one standing and passively waiting for it to roll over. There's a lot we can do to be able to look at the future with hope instead of fear, to feel empowered instead of intimidated.

Let's go global!